Janet Walker Interview

PROJECT TITLE: Women at the University of Winnipeg during Second-Wave Feminism

NARRATOR: Janet Walker

INTERVIEWER: Alyson Shane

DATE OF RECORDING: January 31st, 2013

PLACE OF RECORDING: The University of Winnipeg, MAN 3M50

SESSION: 1 of 1

LENGTH OF SESSION: 1:15:15

TOTAL INTERVIEW LENGTH: 1:15:15

AUDIO QUALITY: Very good.

FILE NAME: UWW SW Alyson Shane WALKER Janet 20130131 Normalized.mp3

TRANSCRIBER: Alyson Shane

DATE TRANSCRIPTION COMPLETED: March 13, 2013

AUDIT EDITOR:

DATE AUDIT EDIT COMPLETED:

DATE REVIEWED BY NARRATOR:

FINAL CORRECTIONS (Date, Editor):

[0:00] Alyson Shane: Okay, as far as I know we are recording. We are at the university of Winnipeg campus it is quarter to three on January 31st. I’m here with Janet Walker and I’m Alyson Shane and I’m doing my interview with her about her experiences on campus during the time of second wave feminism, and I will start by asking Janet some questions:

[0:27] Alyson Shane: So Janet, can you tell me about yourself, please.

[0:29] Janet Walker: I sure can. I was born here in Winnipeg and grew up in East Kildonan and managed to come to university thanks to some funds that my parents set aside. [I] graduated from Miles Mac Collegiate in East Kildonan in 1974 and my sister had been a student at the University of Winnipeg, and I knew a lot of my friends were graduating from miles mac and coming here as well. So I started school in 1974 and I’ve spent a lot of time in these hallowed halls since the days in that early period, and I’ve learned a lot about life and lot about discipline and the academic world since then.

[1:18] Alyson Shane: So it that what made you wanted to be a student at the university, that a lot of your friends were going?

[1:24] Janet Walker: Well, actually I’d always hoped my parents were always really, really supportive of education and my father did not have an opportunity to take a university education he felt the need to go out and work right after he graduated from high school, so my parents were both very, very supportive of continuing education beyond high school. One of the things that they did was that my grandfather had a house on Lipton Street that sold, and my parents this is in the I guess it would have been late 1960’s early 70’s when my grandmother moved and they took the proceeds from the house and invested them for my two sisters and I to be able to carry on to university. So I think we purchased our books but they had actually invested in the education, and it was the result of that encouragement that I needed coming up. Also it was East Kildonan students students from East Kildonan typically went to the University of Winnipeg because its so much closer than going to the U of M unless you’re heading into a professional faculty. I was very interested in taking courses in English, which was what I had intended to major in, and I did, but I dabbled around a bit in the meantime.

[2:40] Alyson Shane: Can you tell me about a typical day on campus?

[2:42] Janet Walker: Well the first year was very interesting because I took all introductory courses and it was great planning your own timetable and having some of that kind of freedom. I used to have dreams at night that I was missing classes -in fact I still occasionally have a dream that I miss a class. I think it’s because of all that sudden independence where you really leave a very structured system and head into one that’s got a lot more freedom.

[3:08] My recollections of us really start more vividly during my second year where I was really involved in the students association, and this place was truly a second home. I think I only slept in my own bed but spent every waking hour at university. I took the Watt Street bus we lived very close to watt street and we’d take the Watt Street bus which only came periodically. It was the worst bus in Winnipeg and likely remains so, the worst bus in the city, and so it’d be the dark of night well after 10pm that I’d be arriving home from school and it was mostly because I was involved and so were many of the friends that I developed in university. I was really involved in matters around campus.

[4:01] Alyson Shane: How did you balance your schoolwork as well as your other responsibilities?

[4:06] Janet Walker: Well I’m sure I didn't do it very well. I think keeping up with the studies was always really important but I was aware of the fact that I was experimenting. I was a B student and was always grateful when I got a B and I wasn’t out there to win any awards, and I didn’t in my academic world. So I think as a result of not really going overboard on the studying side I did have time to do other things. I tend to take on more than I can, so it’s been kind of the story of my life that I take on more than is reasonable. But it worked out well my first year: I worked at Eaton’s, I was appointed at Miles Mac to the role of Junior Executive it was a retail training program where one young woman and young man from every high school in Winnipeg would go to work in a department in Eaton’s. We took courses like a program on Saturday mornings so I had got interested in the retail sector and kept that job for the further year because my friend Michael Shane and I -Michael Shane will be continuing person in my stories- he was alongside me through university quite a bit. He was at Grant Park high school we were both assigned to the shirt department at Eaton’s in 1973-74, and he and I stayed on for the following year to work with the next coming students. Then I went to The Bay to work in men’s wear, and there was something really great about studying and having a place of part-time employment that was right nearby.

[5:53] In those days thought my parents would have expected that we study full time and that we would graduate within three years, because on a five-course basis three years you have 15 courses, 15 credits and expect to graduate. I ended up changing that in that I studied for two years and took a year off to do some work with the provincial government with a working bursary program. A guy by the name of Lee Sage was running the program called Citizens Inquiry and it was telephone information service for the province, and I learned a lot about how government works and what services are available and what levels of government do which things. That was after my time with the Student’s Association after two years of study, and then I came back for my third and final year. So it took me until 1978 to graduate, and it’s a bit of a family joke because my parents bought me a charm on a necklace as a gift from a trip that they took at one time and it was dated 1978 and at the time I was planning on graduating in 1977 and I thought “on my goodness they know something, they don’t trust that I’m going to be able to complete it” and I’m sure they just did the calculations and realized that I was going to take longer because I do tend to take on more things and it does take me longer to get to the place where I thought I was going to get but I have lots of fun along the way.

[7:25] Alyson Shane: Who was your favourite professor while you were on campus?

[7:27] Janet Walker: Clearly Carl Ridd who taught religious studies. I took a course called Literature of the Bible and I wasn't a big theology type student but I was very intreated in what literature was all about and I learned from Professor Ridd that the Bible was a price of literature like many others, and had many writers and was edited at times, and it was intriguing to me to actually consider the concepts the he worked with to help us understand the role of religion and literature. It was a game changer for me, it allowed me to indulge in some thoughtfulness that I really, really was compelled by. I was really bad at memorizing facts so I avoided the science programs but I sure found out that I loved the study of the origin of thought and faith and literature.

[8:34] Alyson Shane: Who was your least favourite professor?

[8:36] Janet Walker: Hmm, well that’s interesting. You know regrettably I had a professor in a compositional course it was an english course, I don’t remember the name, and I wouldn’t say he was a least favourite but he was the least available. I think he came very ill through the year and he missed a lot of class and it was a year where we struggled independently in a composition course and I remember feeling for the professor who was -when he did come to class he was very ill. Gosh I can’t remember his name. I can’t say I had any that I didn’t learn anything from.

[9:15] Oh! I certainly enjoyed for crazy reasons Elliot Levine who I think only recently retired. He is a professor of philosophy and he had the ability to sit in front of a class, sit at the desk, and nonstop pontificate in kind of a monotone voice for the entire class. It’s astounding that someone can actually do that, but I do remember that. Also a great professor and a course that I really enjoyed and wound up taking as sort of a sideline that played more of a role in my future than I thought was a course called urban workshop and it was taught by Professor Lloyd Axworthy who taught it in tandem with Christine Mckee and those two were brilliant. It was a small seminar course, I met some really great people. We did a lot of practical work but we learned about urban development and, urban workshop, it was an urban workshop class. Anyway it was terrific, it was a terrific program and they were terrific professors.

[10:27] Alyson Shane: what kind of student clubs were there on campus?

[10:31] Janet Walker: Oh there were all kinds. The Uniter, the photography club, student radio, I had the pleasure about learning about in some depth. I think it was Marshall Kearn who had been the head of student radio, the head of the student newspaper at that time was, what was his name, he was very good, and photography [pause, sigh] these names can’t -I’m not finding them right away but really, really wonderful guys who ran these programs. A little more radical than what I was used to and I came to really appreciate how much freedom and independence meant to the university world. So there were all sorts of clubs but those were the three key areas that we would spend a lot of time on with the student’s association group.

[11:29] Alyson Shane: What kinds of social events were there on campus?

[11:32] Janet Walker: Oh well socials hit the University of Winnipeg. My friend Michael Shane was the VP of Programming for the Student’s Association, a role that he took on after being Treasurer so he took on both roles the Treasurer and VP of Programming and he was responsible for the socials which we used to have in Riddell Hall. They’d set up tables as the bar and by the end of the night, and I’d work at the bar -we loved the socials- but at the end of the night the carpet beneath the bar was just full of spilled beer. Just full. The music of course was really loud and there was all that disco lighting in those days and oh my gosh it was just jam-packed. Michael would actually be -he would kill me to hear me talk about this- he would be finding a way to reuse both admission tickets and drink tickets in those days. We could have lost our liquor license for sure but people would be packed in and there would be more liquor sold for sure and it was an incredible time. Amazing that we weren’t stopped from doing that. We would have regular socials, they were a great fundraiser, social event for the university. So I’d say that, that was key. I mean in addition to the basketball and volleyball games, we’d watch a lot of the sports and in those days it would be in the lower level the basement of Riddell Hall because that was the gym. We were also involved in a lot of student protests. We did rallies on the board of regents related to tuition fee increases in those days and there was a bunch of lobbying activity to get a music listening centre on campus I can’t remember what it was called but the idea was a place where students could listen to music. So different from today’s world where everyone has their iPod but it was a key issue around student’s association activity.

[13:41] Alyson Shane: Can you tell me a little bit about the kinds of clothes you wore on campus while you were here?

[13:49] Janet Walker: Well I can tell you that Michael Shane wore overalls all the time which was just as crazy as could be but that was his little trademark. So everybody had their - I don’t remember much about clothing. We wore pants, the girls wore pants there was no doubt that that was a freedom that we had earned in Junior High or beyond. No clue, no clue what the clothes were like, I can’t remember. There was a time when clothes were important to me but now I cannot even think about it.

[14:22] Alyson Shane: Were you allowed to smoke on campus, and did you?

[14:27] Janet Walker: I don’t think so. I didn’t smoke and I believe that -wait a minute. I can’t recall, isn’t that funny. No recollection, because I wasn’t a smoker. But you know what there was smoking everywhere in those days like you could smoke in restaurants so it’s possible. Was there a place... There might have been a restaurant or a place where you could smoke. Something makes me think Lockhart Hall was full of smoke in that little cafeteria area, but I don’t recall.

[15:07] Alyson Shane: Can you tell me about your circle of friends? Beyond Michael Shane.

[15:11] Janet Walker: Okay, I’m going to tell you that most of my friends were people that I met -well, I started out with friends from Miles Mac and we got together and we’d start to -it depended on where you hung around and what lounge furniture you chose and we’d hang around on the 4th color of centennial hall and we met lots and lost of first year students there and the whole pool of friends expanded in a big way. But I think the student council people the students association were probably most influential around my period around my time here and Paul Mcfayden was the student president and a guy named Bob Breavik was the VP Academic. John Byen was the VP Programming and two good friends Pam Smith actually came with me from Miles Mac and became really involved in the pr programming side of the student’s association. Along with Monique Grégroire from the Collège St. Boniface, she was just a dynamo and we had lots and lots of fun together during that Student Association time.

[16:29] Later on it was more, I was then one year older when I came back in that 1978 and that was the year that I took the urban workshop and Jan Sanderson -Jan Mcloughlin, Jan Sanderson became a good friend and today Jan is deputy minister with Kevin Chief in the provincial government. Kevin chief being the minister of, I think it’s children, child and family... children and youth? Jan is just amazing person who I came to have a lot of respect for. But you know you bump into friends all the time who you remember. A colleague of mine, Laura Mukuska who I do some work with today, she and her twin sister were students that I came to know in the first year. A whole group of kids, Dave Taylor and his friends and colleagues became good friends and Dave dated my sister as well years later. There were some fine people. Fine people involved.

[17:42] Alyson Shane: What did you talk to your friends about?

[17:43] Janet Walker: Hmm. I would say for the first time in my life we began to talk about issues. Certainly there was conversations about boyfriends and girlfriends and dating, well it wasn’t really dating but hanging with people and all the rest of it and I became very aware of the importance of freedom in relationships. It was wonderful to see the mix of relationships, you’d see young guys and young women together and mixing and all the rest of it. It was really, really cool to have lots of friends. That wasn’t the case for us in high school while it was cool and all that it seemed to me that they were looking for the one perfect person and that wasn’t the case in university. There was too much to learn about each other so we really enjoyed spreading our wings.

[18:37] But I think most notably would be the fact that we began talking about -one of the key topics of our board meetings throughout the time- and I wouldn’t have remembered it without referring back to the minutes that I was responsible of taking as the secretary to the student’s association, but foreign students. In those days it was limited, they were limiting the amount of foreign students that could come to Canada and the students association at the University of Winnipeg like many others across the country were actually lobbying to have university education, Canadian university education available on a broader basis and it’s very ironic to see today the fees that we’re charging foreign students and how vigorously we’re investing in recruitment of those students and the fees they bring as amend of academic survival, of the university’s survival. So in those days it was very different. So reviewing the book of minutes to see our debate around that and what we understood the university to be working towards only to find out that it was only 5% of the student population that was going to be able to be foreign students. We were dismayed by that. And it made me realize -we didn’t have the Internet of course- it made me realize that our was larger, we were actually dealing with issues that were affecting a much larger scope than just East Kildonan and Miles Mac Collegiate.

20:02] Alyson Shane: [Clears throat] Excuse me. Tell me about your romantic relationships.

[20:12] Janet Walker: Well, I met lots of guys and there was lots of dating and lots of dancing and lots of falling in love and, but you know university for me wasn’t the time. I think I probably matured at a slower rate than lots. There were lots and lots [of males] that were good friends and some of them would have been romantic but I don’t think there was many that were seriously notable. I dated a guy who went to University of Manitoba and he was probably my closest -he was more of a childhood friend, and he was probably the closest if you want to cal it romantic in those days. Anyway lots and lots of good friends, lots of dating, lots of fun. But I wouldn’t say that they fall into that romantic category.

[21:12] Alyson Shane: Can you tell me about your fun dating times, then? Just to explore your relationship with the opposite sex a little bit.

[21:25] Janet Walker: I would say that, getting back to the socials description. I think you know the socials provided a lot of time for body to body contact so that was always the opportunity to find somebody. You know ethere were always lots of student guy friends but my recollection wasn’t the traditional kind of dating where the guy came to your house and met your parents and we all had our own cars, not during the week necessarily because you didn’t bring your vehicle to campus, but we had a lot of freedom. So it was usually with groups of peopple, lots of, certainly there would be drinking involved, lots of drinking and some degree or marijuana that was always part o the entettainment but I would say for the most part, yeah how do I describe fun. Really enojoyable lots of great laughter times, not a lot of sleeping around with people in my experience in university world but certainly there was birth control which was very accessible. Me and my friends would all be taking birth control for various reasons, but I’m not sure that it was really driving us to sexual relationships. Certainly romantically and agreat deal of fun and mental stimulation. We did a lot of talking about the some of the things that were were learning in our classes. That was actually quite -that was quite stimulating for us.

[23:06] Alyson Shane: You’ve mentioned socials and drinking a few times, did you and your social circle prescribe to the 70’s “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll” lifestyle at all?

[23:16] Janet Walker: Sure. I mean not like, that was kind of a given. I mean there was no doubt that that was the lifestyle of the day. Rock and roll, absolutely. Sex and drugs, were absolutely a part of our lives throughout late highschool and into university. I remember in younger days being invited to movies and that kind of stuff but I think that was, maybe we were breaking ground and we didn’t really realize it in that way. Especially this, I mean we were right at the end of the baby boomers with me, or near the end, so we kind of fell right into that and we kind of accepted it and I guess I don’t really see it as that remarkable. But certainly it existed. Everybody had access to drugs, everybody could have sex every weekend if they wanted to, and lots of people did.

[24:17] Alyson Shane: What do you feel was the most important book or idea that you studied while on campus?

[Janet pauses]

[24:28] Janet Walker: Okay now, this is -I’m pausing to think. [Quietly, to herself] Book or idea.

[24:36] I think I’d go back to the concept that Carl Ridd would have taken us through in a Literature of the Bible class. He had this way of drawing a circle, and this was every day on the chalkboard he would draw this circle and just as it was abiout to be joined at the top he would follow that line through and put an arrow on it. Talking about kind off, coming kind of “la la la” [twirls hands in the air] he used to say, he’d sometimes even turn himself around standing at the front of the class in the most endearing and engaging way. He’d say humankind, mankind was moving around without much direction, much focus, everything was just a round circle and then there was a straight-ahead line that appeared and began to direct people’s spiritual and religious quest. So for the first time I began to see the differences between female and male, the more cyclical movement and the straight-ahead arrow being the more linear based, the more religion based, the more power based in that way, and I think that it was that conception and the fact that there was nothing magical about the words in the bible other than they were written by human beings, written by people of the day and they were indeed a piece of history. It think that recgonition has been with me deeply ever since, the meeting and learning from Carl Ridd. It was and remains really important to me.

[26:30] Alyson Shane: What sorts of literature or support existed for women’s civil rights when you were here?

[26:35] Janet Walker: You know, it’s interesting, there probably would have been all kinds. We had tons of role models and there was no doubt that women’s rights were top of mind for us as young women. But it was kind of in a very observational role in your late teens and early twenties we were watching things as they were unfolding and we were aware that we were a part of it but we didn’t have much contact with it. We always knew that we were capable of doing what men could do and you were aware that men were traditionally in the power roles, but you accepted it as apart of growing up. And then of course benifitting from the women who went ahead who recgonized that there were barriers for success for women and were ready to demonstrate that so clearly we were living that all the time. The time that I was most aware of it was when I was sitting on the Univerisity of Winnipeg board of regents after my peiod of time in the students association and after a conference that I attended as what I was secretary of the student’s council. I was invited by the university’s board prior to my getting involved to going to this women’s conference and this would have been in the fall of ’75 it was called “Women in Universities” and I went to this conference at the invitation of the president, Harry Duckworth, at the time, a man I came to know and work for quite a bit.

[28:16] It was my first experience actually seeing groups of young women students talking about the importance of university education leading them to roles where they could make a difference and have responsibility at the same level as men. So we were struggling with it and one of the stories that I’ve told before but its indicative of where we were as part of the conference sessions one of the young women stood up and went to the microphone and said “you know the thing that we have to do as women is get into the male-dominated professions. I’m in engineering, we must take over these fields. We must send more women into these fields because we will not be able to compete without being there. We simply must get in there and do it, we certainly have the capabilities, we must break down these barriers”. So a huge round of applause it was just incredible it was the most stimulating and engaging kind of conference sessions that you could go to. There was a line up and others spoke and I was excited about thinking wow this is really blatant we’re going to go out there and make these kinds of gains and do it strategically and all that kind of other stuff, it just blew my mind. And then a woman came up and she was as I recall, she was the last person who spoke -she may have been the last person that I listened to but she was a very quiet young woman who went up and brave soul that she was she said “you know, part of the reason that I am here is that I am not the kind of woman who can boldly go into the faculties of engineering and I am not sure, I have lots of capacities and intelligence and so on but I am not sure how to go on, so part of what I think you want to remember is that you don’t go so far ahead that you don’t leave behind people like me” and that too was a really important message a really important lesson to learn.

[30:21] I shared a room at that conference with Corrine Kauz, who was the librarian for the university and I was very very proud to be a part of the university that had such a senior position open and available to women, and it was clearly. When Dr. Duckworth encouraged me to come and work at the university after graduation, this was '79, he invited me to come to his offices when I was working at RRC at the time and I was recruiting students to Red River and he was concerned that I needed to be dedicating that kind of energy instead to my alma mater and he said to me “you will find” he offered me a position to come and run an entrance scholarship program which was a pioneering effort and I was thrilled to be a part of that and I learned a great deal. But as part of his recruitment of me he said, he engaged Gail Hall who was the director of Alumni Affairs, she was in the meeting with me so I was being treated as an alumnus of the institution and being invited back by the president which was very compelling but he also said “you should know that we treat women well here at the university. Our director of Personnel” in those days, it would be Human Resources now “is Berri Scott, a fine and intelligent woman who we trust with our personnel and hiring activity, and our director of Pr Joy McDermott does exceptional work and is well-respected across the country for her work and leadership.” That wasn’t compelling to me at the time but I realize the message was an important one for him to be extending.

[32:01] In those days the men were very gentlemanly and so the leadership of the people who were on the Status of Women’s committee, women like Muriel Smith and Berenice Sisler, they carried themselves very very well at board meetings. They were well-dressed, simply dressed, well-dressed, articulate, unemotional, powerful women, and seeing those women around the board table with men like Bob Siddall, a wonderful man, he was in a very senior position at Great West Life, vice president at least, and he was chair of the board when I was a student member. Guys like Harold Thompson with, I believe he was with Wawanesa Insurance, but these were very senior community leaders, men in their suits and appointed oddly enough and wonderfully enough by the united church and these experiences men, primarily, brought a lot of good business practice to the university and I believe that the university was made better because there was good, good attention being paid to balanced budgets. But the women around the table stood out and spoke out compassionately and in great aligment with the student’s interests and certainly women’s interests and they were the pioneers of that effort and it was an honor to be at the table around them.

[33:43] Alyson Shane: Just getting back to women’s services on campus: do you remember if there were any services on campus that supported women’s sexuality? You had said earlier that the pill was available, or that you were all on birth control, was that available on campus?

[33:55] Janet Walker: I’m sure it was. One of the things that I remember putting together in the handbook was the picture of the student nurse, I mean she was buried down in the basement of Manitoba Hall, but surely having her on campus was a great thing. There would have been lots of, I’m not sure what some of the clubs were called but I’m sure a review of a list of the of the various organizations on campus would demonstrate that that was -yes, I would say that the pill was available on campus, without a doubt. In my recollection, anyway.

[34:30] Alyson Shane: Was the Birth Control Handbook distributed on campus?

[34:34] Janet Walker: No clue, I don’t remember. We all know a lot about birth control in those days, I mean it was clearly, yeah, yeah. Here’s I’m reading from the student handbook, the health nurse was Kris Biquist: [reading from the handbook] “students are seen on a regular basis for first aid and minor injuries, emergency medical needs, family planning” -code. I’m saying the word code myself- ‘diet planning, referral for dental care, communicable diseases, and immunizations.” So this was understood by all of us to mean sexually transmitted diseases, birth control, for sure. Yeah, that was available. I would be surprised if it wasn’t.

[35:21] Alyson Shane: What sorts of rules of conduct were on campus at the time? You had mentioned some of the men on the board of regents were very ‘gentlemanly’, can you elaborate on that a bit more?

[35:32] Janet Walker: fatherly, I would say. They would have had daughters who they would have been supporting, the same way that my father had three daughters and was very aware of the barriers to success that we faced and very interested in us achieving success. So my sense was that these gentlemen on the board had that same kind of realization, that their daughters and young women that they knew were demonstrating abilities and being able to handle university courses and to be able to carry their weight in the world and they were very supportive of that. I believe they knew no other way than to be fatherly, to be gentlemanly. I would say that there was more concern at their level about whether or not they held the door open for the women, something that I think people still struggle with today and they would always err on the side of the kindness attached to it. I think there was some uncertainly by men as to how they were to behave and I think they were used to making decisions around their own boardroom tables that had a lot more power behind them, that they could move the board in one direction or another. Clearly they would lobby behind the scenes ahead of time, make sure that they had the votes to win in particular areas, but the debate around the table was always very earnest, very candid, very articular arguments on all sides and there was a lot of understanding. I think the gentlemen made a real effort to change their ways and to be receptive to the needs that were expressed by women.

[37:20] We were very involved in the building of the Duckworth Centre,  and how it was envisioned and the interests that was put into, this would have been some years later, the interest that was put into making sure that there was access for the physically disabled and Peggy Hayes was very involved in making sure that the Duckworth Centre was built with the needs of the physically disabled or the handicapped as they were called at that time, but there was lots of responsiveness. I remember arguing that there should be more cubicles for women in the washrooms there and I remember them accommodating that. I have no idea if there are enough washrooms in the Duckworth but if there are too many it’s probably my fault. I can’t imagine there every being too many cubicles, but those were the kinds of things that we were involved in. We were involved in things, we were included.

[38:08] Alyson Shane: Did you find that there were any unspoken rules between yourself as a female student and the other males on campus?

[38:15] Janet Walker: No, I would say my university experience was the most memorable piece of it was that it would be very rare that you would find a male student who was not up to speed on issues of female equality.

[38:32] Alyson Shane: What were some of the issues that women faced on campus?

[38:36] Janet Walker: You know it’s interesting because I was thinking about whether or not safety was an issue and I do recall being interested in safety but it wasn’t an issue. It really wasn’t, not to my recollection. We were perusing things like making sure that there was appropriate lounge furniture, there wasn’t anything but hard-back chairs and some lounge furniture that gave us the idea that we could have more. There was those kinds of things, I don’t know that there was women’s issues. The student’s association leadership was superb and in the country I think was incredible and this predates, prior to my turner surrounding the student’s association but the daycare on campus, it was the best daycare in the city., I think there were 35 children in that daycare and it was in the basement of Bryce Hall, Bryce-Ashdown hall there, Bryce Hall I guess and it was phenomenal. Great credit to the students who came before me for making sure that the daycare was in place, so that was a great issue which had been addressed.

[39:47] I would say we were at the very, very early stages of seeing not only foreign students but I would say that there were very few visible minorities in those days. I mean certainly they existed and engaged in campus life but I would say very very few first nations people, so my sense is that we got to a stage where women’s equality was becoming more accepted. We knew we had a lot to go and I think there was disappointment in those days that we weren’t more vigilant in those days to sustain it because I believe that we have lost ground over the last few decades as opposed to gained and I think that we may have been a part of the second wave that were more complacent than most because we really did see that we had more than those that came before us.

[40:53] Alyson Shane: Was there any gay right’s activism on campus, and if so how did you feel about it?

[41:02] Janet Walker: I believe there was and I think we were okay with it. It may have been new, but I’m sure we were okay with it. I remember there being, I believe we had a gay guy on the student executive or the student council in those days, but it was not a big deal. It came along with this, all of this freedom and understanding that life was rich and wonderful.

[41:25] Alyson Shane: Were there any boycotts which were supported by students on campus?

[41:28] Janet Walker: Ooh yes, we boycotted I think it was Beaver Foods in those days, we had a highly effective coffee boycott. It was fantastic, I think for the first time we realized that we had the power to influence and we did decide, I can’t remember if it was a day or a week or whatever it was, something makes me think it may have lasted ten days, and I recall -Doctor Harry Duckworth was just and amazing man and it was he that invited Paul McFayden who was the president, the student council president in those days, he invited Paul to come for coffee. They had what I believe was a public coffee days in Riddell Hall where they negotiated a better coffee rate. In my recollection it would have been in those days that a cup of coffee had gone up from fifteen cents to twenty-five cents, something ridiculous and we boycotted that huge leap in coffee prices and I believe it was effective and coffee went back down to it’s original price. There’s probably more in student newspapers on that but, yeah, we learned that our collective will could change things.

[42:33] Alyson Shane: You mentioned Beaver Foods: what sort of food options did you have on campus?

[42:41] Janet Walker: We had very few -I mean there asa hot food with Beaver Foods but it wasn’t all that appetizing and it was tough. We had machines- there were vending machines up on the fourth floor of Centennial and to my recollection the students association actually gained some revenue from the vending machines, so we were clearly in conflict of interest around good nutrition value and whether or not we would be prepared to give up the vending machine revenue. So that negotiation would have been an interesting one, and I’m only just thinking about it at this moment. Riddell hall would offer, I think it was hours of operation, certainly the quality of the food isn’t what it is today but I don’t even think it was that great two years ago, so we were definitely at a point where we were being run by the food services agency.

[43:34] Alyson Shane: A little bit earlier on you had mentioned rising tuition costs, can you elaborate on that a bit more?

[43:39] Janet Walker: Oh I can’t even remember the year, but it was a time where we had decided that we needed to make known our concern about the increasing cost of tuition. And we had voted, I noticed in some of our minutes, that we had voted to support the University of Manitoba who were taking the lead role and the National University Students, NUS, was taking a lot of leadership in Canada on this issue. We knew the board of regents met on Monday evenings on campus, the first Monday of the month, or whatever, one of the Mondays, and we knew that there was a meeting coming up and that the budget was going to be talked about and the proposed budget increase. That information would have come to us from our president, Paul McFayden, and he would have been aware of that, probably had a conversation with Dr. Duckworth and there was probably a candid conversation letting him know that there was going to be a demonstration on this matter.

[44:40] So we were planning that and there were placards that were made up and we were geared up for this and I remember knowing that this was a tough one because I hand’t come from a background of labour-oriented background but I knew that collective will was important and demonstrating our collective will was important and that demonstrating our concern was important. That afternoon I think it was about 3pm that afternoon Claudia Wright the professor of politics, an amazing woman who only passed away recently and she would have been a study and a half, anyway Claudia Wright invited Michael Shane and I -Michael was a student of politics, I only took a couple of politics courses but Michael was very engaged and he would have been one of her students. So she called us together for coffee and told us that we needed to keep our wits about us when we were doing these kinds of protests because it was highly likely that the administration could call in the police and that we needed to be prepared to protect ourselves in the event that the police would decide to take action. She described how we should bed over, bend forward and cover our heads and the back of our necks and she told us this because she was involved in the Berkley Riots and for the first time around this issue I was fearful and of course more determined than ever.

[46:10] We met that evening at the bottom of the escalators in Centennial Hall with our placard signs on their nice little pieces of wood had been made up and we proceeded to head out to the front doors of Wesley Hall where we knew the board members would be coming to attend the meeting. We were giving them a hard time and calling out “no fee increases!” I wouldn’t say that we were giving them a hard time but we were loud and we were many. Some of the gentlemanly board members came out to escort some of the other board members into the meeting including the women. But we were well-behaved, there wasn’t a problem and no police came. Then this amazing thing happened, it was a life lesson for me in politics. On the front step of Wesley Hall came Dr. Harry Duckworth carrying his own placard and it said “Fees no higher than necessary”, and he invited us all to come into Convocation Hall and he would respond to any questions that we might have. He completely took the lid off of the steaming pot, we were going to be heard we were going to be able to have the conversation. He was amazing. He stood at the front of the room, on his own if I recall, there must have been at least a hundred of us, probably more but at least a hundred and we were in convocation hall and the board of regents members were on the balcony watching, but certainly protected from the masses of students. We had our signs and we were seated on the floor, and he proceeded to call upon the students and incredibly by name. I remember having my hand raised and he said “first question” or “third question, Janet, did you have something to ask?” and he completely disempowered me because I couldn’t play the role of student radical because the president knew me by my first name and called me by name. I remember asking the question and feeling like he was listening and he had completely, I don’t want to say disempowered, but he took the wind out of our sails. Now I think that they dis raise tuition -I know that they raised it, they did raise fees, I don’t know if they raised it a lot more than they would have if we hand’t protested, but we were heard and it was important.

[48:58] Alyson Shane: You’d mentioned that you had been pretty involved in student activity, including the UWSA elections, who did you vote for?

[49:04] Janet Walker: Oh! I can’t remember. We voted for directors at large, I remember voting for... Did I vote for Colin McFayden? I probably did, I was always involved in the elections, probably involved in even helping conduct some of the election, I have this recollection of carrying a ballot box. I don’t remember who I voted for -Chris Guest, he was student council president and I remember being very supportive of him. Dave yBan may have run the following year. There was lot of opportunity to make a difference but never so many people running that there was huge competition. Regrettably.

[49:50] Alyson Shane: Were you on campus when Marilou McPhedran was on campus?

[49:52] Janet Walker: No, I knew Marilou by reputation and she of course was known for making such a decisive move around closing the doors of the uniter. And it was one of those things that we inherited as a knowledge of past student president exercising a level of power that we didn’t understand fully, but there was definitely tension between the student leadership and the uniter and the photography club -definitely the uniter. I salute Paul and Chris guest and other who were able to build relationships after the incident and the issue around Marilou, I have no doubt that she would have felt that she did what she needed to do and done what she felt she needed to do and all the rest of it, and there were lasting repercussions until at least the mid seventies. I don’t remember what year she was but she definitely preceded my time on campus.

[50:57] Alyson Shane: you mentioned earlier that, you know, that issues around women’s rights were kind of on the way out, there weren’t any -were there any groups on campus pushing for the right of female students, or any issues that they may have had?

[51:52] Janet Walker: It’s interesting, because I do believe there were, and I do believe that they would have been making progress, but I can’t recall an example of who or what. It would be interesting to take a look -there’s something in this material about ‘recognized groups’, you had to be a recognized campus group in order to have posters put up, I remember us making some kind of policy about having posters put up, and I believe that there was some group involved but I just can’t recall.

[51:45] Alyson Shane: You’ve mentioned The Uniter a couple of times, were there any popular columns in The Uniter while you were on campus?

[51:53] Janet Walker: Oh, tons, every time The Uniter came out there would be something popular or controversial. I have no recollection of what those were but there was always something, you read the newspaper cover-to-cover, and there was good stuff and there were thoughtful pieces and there were radical pieces, and it was just a great time to be involved. It’s interesting that in being involved and reading the newspaper I didn’t know anything about women’s organizations or groups. I was very involved in the student life piece and I would say quite selectively interested in student life and campus issues including things that were more students association-wide than student group specific. I was in a very good place in that time and wasn’t experiencing the level of disempowerment that some women would have been far more aware of than myself.

[53:00] Alyson Shane: Were there any exceptional guest speakers who gave lectures on campus?

[53:04] Janet Walker: Yes. Again, without the benefit of something to prompt my memory... Oh, I remember that there was, was Angela Davis here during that era? I believe she was? I believe somehow she was, I remember attending an Angela Davis lecture, and I think that if we were to check that out, she was a very powerful woman with great experience.

[53:35] Alyson Shane: Sorry. [coughing]

[53:40] Janet Walker: No worries, take your time.

[53:51] Janet Walker: I wonder, let’s just take a second and see if I have a lozenge or something for you.

[Recorder is paused. Alyson gets water and Janet gets a coffee.]

[53:56] Alyson Shane: Okay, we are resumed. So, how did Quebec’s Quiet Revolution affect the campus, I know if happened before you were here but did you feel the effects of what happened in Quebec?

[54:10] Janet Walker: No. I don’t know that we did, there would have been some that would have experienced that, but again, not in my experience.

[54:19] Alyson Shane: How did the Civil Rights Movement in the United States affect the campus?

[54:23] Janet Walker: in the same way that I think all of our protests worked, and mine is a limited experience, but I think that we were encouraged by the work of the civil rights movement. I think that certainly having Claudia Wright around to remind us about what that was like. I think later in life I understood the significance of it a lot more, but I think we accepted it as something that happened in our time and we weren’t really aware -i mean, you know how important it is, but at the same time you really can’t have a really good understanding about how terrible the situation was ahead of time without having lived it. We were pretty wrapped up in ourselves, in my experience, there certainly would have been other people that you could have talked to who would have had a sense of what that meant to them during university days, but for me it wasn’t until later after university that I began to see that part of the world.

[55:33] Alyson Shane: Tell me what your thoughts were on the was in Vietnam.

[55:37] Janet Walker: We were, I would say, typical Canadians, in that we did not believe in war. I mean certainly it was not something that we would have been at all supportive of, we would have been concerned about our brothers and sisters who would have been there. It would have been difficult. Did we protest it, was I involved in protests of that nature? No. Not that I wouldn’t have been had I been part of a groups that -it just wasn’t part of my experience.

[56:17] Alyson Shane: Let’s step away for a little bit about your time as a student and talk about when you worked here. How long did you work at the University of Winnipeg, and in what capacity, what roles did you have?

[58:28] Janet Walker: Well I was involved right up until graduation as a student, so that would have been until 1978, and then I went from the U of W and went spent a year at Red River College to do recruitment, I mentioned, and I returned at the request of Dr. Duckworth in 1979. It’s interesting, because I was hired directly by the president and not through normal personnel routes, and I think my appointment was one that caused people to feel concerned around here, for reasons that I fully understand. Steve Coppenger, who was an assistant to the president, he was the director of purchasing when I was an employee and became an assistant to the president under Robin Farquhar, and I too worked under Robin Farquhar. Steve would tell you what he’s told me, which is that he actually went to see Dr. Duckworth to tell him that he thought that it was wrong that I wasn’t hired through competitive process, and I believe that it was one of the tiny things, but one of the accumulated, that helped establish the support staff association. I actually was the head, key representative of the board representing the staff at one time, which was funny because at one time I represented a move off of policy but I also represented the group that was concerned about that, so it was kinda family-ish, if you will. So that was my beginnings running the entrance scholarship program, and we were highly successful. It was Dr. Duckworth’s brain child and I was basically working out of his office, out of the President’s Office, to align my work with the Registrar’s Office, John Frisesn and Judy Dyck, Judy just passed away recently, she went on to become the Awards Director, and a good one, and she and I had to do a lot of work together with John Friesen, and I had this reporting relationship to Dr. Duckworth around student recruitment.

[58:45] My role was to run a program that was designed as a way of getting students to apply early and that their application would work as an automatic application for a student award and we would get their grades as early as we could to calculate their average and proactively offer them a scholarship if their grades were above eighty percent. So it’s kind of a guaranteed scholarship program, it was very careful, strategic, thoughtful plan led by Dr. Duckworth but there were many of us involved in it, and it was my role to go and meet with students in the schools and to tell them about the program and to seek their applications. I would come back with handfuls of applications after a day of speaking and it was a job that I knew because I had been doing it for RRC and I had a great deal of good fun, and lots of good relationships built with the guidance counselors who were the ones who invited me to the schools. Anyway it was part of a big program, we met with alumni in those schools, we did lots of work in that entrance scholarship program, and we were successful in increasing the first year enrollment by twenty percent plus in that first year, which I think was 1980. There was a Uniter story written by a family friend, I hand’t realized that it was Jane Nichols who had actually written the story but the October 1st issue of the Uniter, which I see under the Uniter, the little sub-head reads: [reading from an old issue of the Uniter] “a paper for the hard of thinking and easily pleased,” anyway, the headline is “Enrollment increases a staggering 20.8 percent”, so the efforts were really important. We used the income from the university’s endowment fund to be able to award these. We ran it for two years, I was very involved for two years, the following year we were very close, if we weren’t eighteen percent we were very close to eighteen or more percent increase on top of that, so we had successive, really good years. It was a group effort. It was mentioned in Dr. Duckworth’s book which it titled “One Version of the Truth” in a way that I have been concerned about because he suggests that we were surreptitious in finding the grades of the students but I have no recollection of that taking place. I think that we were, that we had access to the grades that came through a service that the provincial government had and it was a terrific thing to make the process more expeditious.

[1:01:46] Anyway that was my first piece. He retired the following year, I recall, and Dr. Robin Farquhar came on as president, for good reason didn’t know what to do with me because I was working out of his office. He made arrangements for me to be part of the public relations office and I became the director of special events and I believe that was around the 82-83 year so I had the opportunity to plan the university’s convocations and open house and all of the dinners, it was an event-planning role. I did not enjoy any of the events because I was always so worried about something going wrong, but I sure learned a lot about protocol and preparation and I sure became stronger in my logistics as a result and all kinds of ticket distribution and special ordering, ordering meals for special diets. I recall there not being hangers for a coat rack that I’d ordered for a dinner, a president’s dinner at a convocation that was going to be a really important event, no hangers on the coat rack. It was a Sunday and I remember only being able to track down a few dozen of these coat hangers, it was crazy, and we were piling coats, you know, people’s fall and autumn coats on chairs that were lined up on the stairs going down to Riddell Hall. So there were those things that happened, certainly the convocations were highly logistical. I moved from there to become the director of public relations from ’83, ’83-’85 and learned a lot about publications and writing. I would do a report for the Board of Regents and have it out in a one-page edition that we would distribute in hard copy form and I would stay the night here and write up whatever happened. So people would come in on Tuesday morning following the Board of Regent’s meeting and they would get a quick one-page summary of what took place at the meeting and they would just pick up a copy as they were coming up the stairs in Centennial Hall. Once a month I would stay the night there, because I wasn’t a fast writer and of course it had to be typed as well because of course we didn’t have computers in those days, and then it had to be dropped at the print shop first thing in the morning so it could be printed and distributed by 8am.

[1:04:09] So that was a fun part, and I did an alumni journal and worked on that. I left the university in 1986 to go to the Winnipeg Core Initiative but I had some really really good years here at the U of W with my alma mater and I learned a lot about governance, about events, about public relations, all of those areas, and they definitely played a part in my future.

[1:04:34] Alyson Shane: You mentioned that the way that you were hired on at the university was a bit unorthodox, what was the hiring policy for female staff members and faculty at the time?

[1:04:41] Janet Walker: Honestly I don’t know what the policy was but they typically would have been posted. Academic staff would have been different, there would have been competition and all kinds of processes if it had been a senior level, dean or vice president, so the academic would would have been academic and highly rigorous, never breached. But the support staff were much more casual and I don’t think that I was the only one who was hired in the non-competitive way, but it was not correct and Steve Copenger would have been correct in saying that we would have had liked to have had other people competing for that job, people in the university. It was a process that I think was an important to  be followed, but I don’t know if it was applied with such rigor at the time.

[1:05:38] Alyson Shane: Did you notice female staff or faculty members struggle to get tenure or promotions while you were a staff member here?

[1:05:47] Janet Walker: No, I actually think that, if anything, there was a good effort to advance that, but I say that without knowing. I wasn’t on Senate and I think that may have been the area to look at, I think they would have known better, but I believe it was a good -I was here in a good time for female faculty. Of course it wouldn’t have been enough and of course there were primarily men in those roles but I recall there being good number of women certainly in the support staff that were beginning to grow, it’s certainly grown, but it was that we haven’t sustained that momentum that’s been the issue.

[1:06:35] Alyson Shane: What were your experiences dealing with other male students and staff while you were staff here.

[1:06:40] Janet Walker: Good, all good relationships here. My sense is that everything was good relations with those people, I can’t think of any incidents where it wouldn’t have been good. I think as long as people were doing their jobs, we all were very, very tight-knit, it was like a family. We worked as a whole, this was really key.

[1:07:04] Alyson Shane: Was there a time when you said or did something, or you witnessed something, that by today’s standards would be deemed unacceptable?

[Janet pauses to think]

[1:07:25] Janet Walker: I can’t think of anything right off but I’m sure I did, I’m sure there would have been things that became unacceptable for good reason. Although in this world, in the university world at that time it wasn’t as large of a deal because I think we were making so many good gains. We seemed to be in such a good position. That is one that I’ll need to think about.

[1:07:56] Alyson Shane: Do you feel like women’s rights changed on campus at all while you were working here, and if so how did these changed affect your work?

[Janet pauses to think]

[1:08:13] Janet Walker: I’m not sure that women’s rights changed in a major way, I think human rights did. I think the work of the faculty association and the support staff association would have clarified the need for fair treatment and greater equality and that happened after my time of working here, though it was begun in having a support staff association and having a representative on the Board of Regents. I’m not sure if during my era we made huge progress, yeah, another one of those things that I would need to think about. Probably reviewing some of the minuted of the Board of Regents I’d have greater recollection of some of that. I can’t imagine anything better than seeing the minutes of the Status of Women’s Committee that I was on, I would have been much more of an observer and supporter of the women, Muriel and Berenice Sisler and others, because there would have been faculty women on that role. I would have initiated anything, but I would have been proud to be along and proud to be learning from some of these people that were pretty strong.

[1:09:46] Certainly thereafter I became involved with the University Women’s Club and had great admiration for what they were doing and candidly they did more international work than local work in my mind. I think that, I’m just speaking off the top because nothing’s coming in and to some extent it’s because it wasn’t my field of study but my recollection was that the work that was being done on a larger scale was very engaging for universal women as that and much less on a micro level.

[1:10:04] Alyson Shane: How do you feel the roles and expectations of women working at the university have changed, if at all?

[1:10:33] Janet Walker: I’m not sure. I do believe that there’s been some change and that there’s been some stellar and solid female leadership, but for the most part, I believe that women are assigned to more administrative support roles as a matter of course not just at this university but in the world. I think it’s not easy to break our of support positions and into management positions and it’s easier if you do it easier in your career. I think the level of commitment that women have to demonstrate is far greater than what we should have to demonstrate and far greater than what our world is ready to expect. It is bitterly disappointing because what you’ve reminded me of as part of this conversation is that we were making really good progress and I’ve always felt that since the time, it could just be the “those were the days” mindset, but I’m very convinced that since the 70’s we have made fewer gains in terms of economic impact, in terms of those that are measured in terms of power and money.

[1:12:04] Alyson Shane: Do you feel like Second Wave Feminism has left a lasting impact on the university, and if so, in what ways?

[Janet pauses to think]

[1:12:23] Janet Walker: If it’s been a lasting impact, it’s been an impact that has been made and has not maintained the level of momentum that we could have had. So yes I believe that there are women in leadership positions, yes I believe that our faculty association and support staff association have made gains since then, but I think that they have been in terms of human rights as opposed to women’s rights. I think that it has become, for some reason, out of favor for the large number. Now I say this knowing that I didn’t think I was a very active ambassador for women, and probably that we became complacent towards the end thinking that it would simply carry on. But even since that time I’m not sure that I have taken on a leadership role and one of the things that I have been heartsick about in my own life is the inability for women to find flexible work arrangements that allow them to take care of children or elders and still remain working at senior, management, directorship, vice-president levels and the only way that I’ve been able to achieve flexibility around time is to become self-employed. But the large systems, even with computers and the web and all of that stuff, the large systems do not support a part-time, or a flex-time or even what we tried back in the day with job sharing and so on, there is astoundingly little support for women to find alternative ways of working. It’s one of the things that I feel a great deal of regret around and I know that the women that come behind me have very few additional solutions than those that we have already tried to explore but have not been acceptable.

[1:14:46] Alyson Shane: It is not a quarter after four, and that ends my interview with Janet. I don’t think I need to ask anything more-

[1:14:56] Janet Walker: The only thing that we might say is that it is the year 2013, ad the beginning of the interview we said the date and I just want to be sure that we know that it’s 2013.

[1:15:09] Alyson Shane: My mistake. So it is quarter after four on January 31st, 2013, and that concludes me interview with Janet.

[1:15:15] Janet Walker: Thank you so much, Alyson.

[End recording]